Plot Post

Hi guys, time for me to follow up on the plot with the Church of Eternal Life vampires. I'm sorry, but I can't seem to get into a chat room, so I am not able to actually chat as I'd planned. Let's try to talk and brainstorm here.

As you may or may not have seen over here, Millicent and Diodor have a deadline, at which time, unless Millicent blood oaths her congregation, Diodor is going to do it in her place and over her dead body.

This is the background politicking while Millicent's vampires continue on their merry way with no metaphysical protection or training.

For the next two weeks, things are going to slide downhill for those vampires. More of the congregation are going to start losing it and leaving the fold. Some will defect to Diodor's vampires, wanting to be on the winning side before all Hell breaks loose, the rest...

Are bluntly, screwed.

Okay, so, what's been happening. There's been an outside force acting on the vampires of San Francisco. Its goals are more than just stirring things up with the vamps or making some mischief.

It would be reasonable to conclude that its goal might be to take control of the Church's uncontrolled vamps to gain power in vampire society. After all, most of these things are internecine conflicts.

Over the next two weeks leading up to Halloween, a number of things are going to happen, and our investigative and sensitive types may be interested.

The Church has approximately 300 vampires.

Of those vampires you can expect that about 15 or so are master vampires and will be less affected than the others

Of the remaining 285 or so, expect 100 or so to be True Believers of such depth that they will be only minimally affected. They may be willing to talk to investigators. You can talk to me about what your investigators might learn from those interviews or you can see about having an NPC scene. I'm going to be calling in NPC volunteers on this, so those scenes will need a bit of advance scheduling so I can get my volunteers online.

Of the remaining 185 or so, they're going to start losing their shit in a big way.

Yes, that means 185 vampires losing their shit in the next two weeks.

So what does that mean for the city?That's a multipart answer.

People are going to die. Many people. Some of the attacks will be pretty obviously vampire-originated, some of them will be so brutal and violent that police will be wondering after some kind of animal or lycanthrope attack. Experts will be able to point out the signs of vampire attack in those as well.

That of course means that investigators are going to be looking into anyone with ties to the supernatural community - Carl and Odessa, Emmanuel, brave souls venturing down to talk to Tethys, etc.

It also means that humans are going to start being twitchier about anyone they even suspect of ties to supes. This means people will lose business, those who look different are going to be harassed, and Human First will start being extremely vocal in the newspapers and on TV.

All these deaths and the fear and suspicion that will be filling the city are going to have an effect on the veil between the Nevernever and the mundane world. There's going to be more ghost activity and the ghosts are going to be restless and angry.

The veil between this world and the Nevernever is going to be thinner, making crossing over much easier, both for the ghosts and for other beings.

In the week prior to Halloween, the saner fae are going to stop coming over to the mundane world. If someone tracks them down to find out why, they're going to say something bad is coming and no way in Hell are they sticking around. None of them will say what, just that it's big, bad, and it's better to just get the fuck outta Dodge.

Halloween Night at midnight Diodor is going to move against Millicent and the Church vampires. This is going to involve still more deaths and one hell of a lot of metaphysical power getting thrown around.

The veil between the Nevernever and the mundane world is going to weaken enough to let something big and bad into San Francisco.

About the Big BadThere are demons and there are demons. Some of them are the Fallen, and we'll get into those at a later date, and some of them are beings from dark parts of the further reaches of the Nevernever.

The Big Bad is one of the latter.

Metaphysical, magical, and emotional turmoil all have their effects on the separation between the Nevernever and the mundane world. This particular Big Bad is going to want to stir up even more of that because it has a whole family, cousins, in-laws, clones, sprouts, etc. that it wants to help immigrate.

It's going to do it in a way that should offer players a framework to choose their own adventure. The demon is going to work on warping reality and perception for victims to recast them in horror movie tropes.

Do you want your character to get chased by a chainsaw wielding homicidal maniac? Can do. Do you want your character to have a creepy doll come alive and do the same? Can do. Do you want your character to discover that the wax museum down by Pier 39 is actually a house of horrors filled with real bodies under the wax? You betcha.

For instance, at this time, DMZ is going to becoming something more like a Dracula's castle out of old Christopher Lee movies.

How is that happening? It's another aspect of the disturbance in the veil. The demon is taking people part way into a dark Nevernever version of San Francisco. It's using all that horror and fear to build up more power.

It's up to you Obi-Wan Kenobi characters to stop this before the demon succeeds in moving all of San Francisco into the Nevernever for good. (There's canon on whole cities disappearing into the Nevernever for brief periods. SF could be the one that goes for good.)

So what we need is for you guys to brainstorm on how to stop the demon, and consider how you want your characters to be affected, and how I can help facilitate this for you.

What about the players?I hope that you can find ways for this to have some impact in your characters' lives. It's a big city, so there's no requirement to be involved beyond noting the news items, but if you want to be involved, there are a vast number of ways that all of this can affect your character.

Obviously investigators can have a field day, but everyone can have this impact them.

Now, I know you're asking where the initial messing with the vampires came from, and I'm going to tell you that this is part of much longer, broader plot with our city's recurring villain who isn't getting any spotlight for quite a while. I'll give you one word and that's it: Denarian.